While everyone was frothing over the Comey / Sessions material, Trump and his team slipped through reduced protection measures for whales and turtles. The Obama administration (yes I know not everyone liked him) had proposed measures in 2015 to reduce the bycatch of endangered animals, including whales, dolphins and turtles in fishing gear. The new regulations applied to gill nets that historically have been largely responsible for the decline of such animals.
Now I was critical of Trump at the start of his presidency, saying he would be bad for the environment. A lot of people got back to me saying to at least give the guy a chance. Since then he’s hired a climate change denier to head the EPA and gutted its finances, withdrawn from the Paris Climate Accord, he’s pushing through the pipelines, opened up new bear hunting areas… Those are off the top of my head, plus there are various other environmental regulations now under threat. You may agree with some of his moves, but consider this – Is there a single thing Trump has done that would be environmentally positive? Just one?
The challenge we face is the environment offers easy wins, not just for Trump, but for Politicians in general. You cut funding to pensioners, schools, healthcare, disabled – and you have angry voters directly affected that turn up in town halls. Pushing such bills through congress and senate is time consuming and ugly when you are directly affecting people’s lives. But impacting animals – well a bear isn’t going to turn up at your town hall demanding justice is he. The result is governments can find easy wins in reducing environmental safeguards. Bears, Wolves, Dolphin and Turtles sadly don’t vote.